Experience key to a Patriots turnaround

Augusta, GA - There's no way around it. Experience and high school football go hand-in-hand. If you don't have it, your team's probably going to struggle, and last year, Westside and their three seniors struggled.

The bright side, the experience is high on this year's team, and because of that, so are the expectations.

One of the biggest keys is that this team has been together for a year now, so the fundamentals should be much improved.

The other thing, learning from last year, and just letting it go.

Head Coach Steve Hibbits said, "We need to learn some lessons from last year that when it gets tough we need to keep fighting and keep going. At the same time, I'm not going to dwell, I don't want the coaches to dwell and I don't want the players to dwell on what happened last year."

"We're very young, and we were very young last year, and all we're trying to do is just ignore the past and get through it," added senior Jammal Qadir. "Tough times don't last. Tough people do, and that's what we're trying to do."

The Patriots get a good blueprint for turning things around in week one. They go to Butler. The Bulldogs broke a long losing streak against Westside in last year's opener.

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